It is a rare council meeting of the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands that John Paul Jackson doesn’t bring up the issue of bicycle paths.

The municipal councillor and avid cyclist has been peddling his vision of a bike-friendly township spider-webbed with bicycle paths since his election two years ago.

Jackson has learned not to call them “bicycle paths,” though. In the political parlance of today, it’s “paved shoulders.”

Paved shoulders are more politically salable to the rural municipalities that make up the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, according to Jackson. Rural residents and politicians often view bike paths as a foreign, big-city frill that would be used mainly by outsiders, while paved shoulders is a term much closer to home.

Jackson says that county support for paved shoulders is crucial because the main routes through the TLTI are owned and maintained by the county, not the township. Think Highways 2, 3 and 32. Although the TLTI owns 330 kilometres of roads, most of them are gravel.

In wooing county support for paved shoulders, TLTI Mayor Joe Baptista, who sits on county council, and Jackson stress the cost benefits of paving shoulders.

Jackson said studies of paved shoulders in Lennox and Addington County and in Grey County indicate that they would pay for themselves over the life of the road by reducing maintenance costs. Other studies suggest the life expectancy of roads can be increased by five years.

The edges of the road last longer, road crews don’t have to re-gravel and grade the sides of the road and clean the gravel out of culverts, they reduce the need to control growth on the side of roads and they make snow removal easier, Jackson said in a report that he submitted to county councillors.

He said that Lennox and Addington figured it would recoup the cost of its paved shoulders over eight to 10 years, while Grey County estimated it would take 15 years.

Those counties are only two among the handful of nearby counties that have hopped on the paved-shoulder bandwagon, Jackson said. Lanark’s three-year-old program is 30-per-cent complete, Haliburton has an informal one-metre-wide shoulder policy on major roads and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry has a shoulder-paving policy for Hwy. 2.

In fact, Jackson said in an interview, cycling groups have rated Leeds and Grenville as one the most unfriendly counties toward cyclists in the province.

“That’s embarrassing,” he said.

But Jackson and Baptista stress that saving money is only one argument for paved shoulders. Safety – of cyclists, pedestrians, joggers and motorists – is a major benefit of the paved shoulders, they say.

In his report touting paved shoulders, Jackson says motorists benefit by having more room for evasive manoeuvres, space for disabled cars, more clearance from sign and poles, better sight lines at intersections, improved water drain from the road, a wider turn radius and more room to recover control of their vehicles.

As for the safety of cyclists, pedestrians and people in scooters, the advantages are obvious, the report says.

In Quebec, the province reduced the number of fatal bike accidents by two-thirds in the decade after adding paved shoulders, even though the number of cyclists increased steadily over those years, the report says.

Jackson says that paved shoulders also could boost economic development in the county by attracting cycling tourists who tend to spend more money in the community than average tourists, perhaps because they tend to stay longer.

Add to that the obvious health benefits of having more cyclists and the contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and paved shoulders are a no brainer, according to Jackson’s report.

But despite the benefits of paving shoulders, Baptista is finding it a tough sell at the county council table.

Many county mayors are resistant to paved shoulders because of the increased upfront construction costs. Paving shoulders adds roughly $44,000 per kilometre for both sides of the road, according to a 2013 study. Baptista has convinced county council to ask for a staff report on the costs and potential savings of paved shoulders, based on the experiences of Lanark country and others.

Once the county has the facts, it can decide how and whether or not to proceed with paving strategy, Baptista said. The strategy should also identify which roads should be paved. Baptista said the issue is complicated in the county by the fact that not all sections of a highway are suitable for paved shoulders.

In the TLTI, the economic development committee is working with the Frontenac Arc Biosphere to develop a trails strategy that would include bike paths, Baptista said. The strategy is important because it would allow the township to take advantage of provincial grants for cycling infrastructure.

Last spring Brockville received $325,000 from a $10-million provincial government program that promotes cycling. The TLTI was rejected by the same program because, unlike Brockville, the township didn’t have a cycling strategy, Baptista said. He said cycling strategies in both the township and county would position them to take advantage of the program.

Baptista said the TLTI council also has asked its public works director for a report on the merits of paved shoulders on township roads. Both the economic development strategy and the roads report should be ready in six months or so, he said.

Jackson expresses some frustration with all of the reports, saying the township and county should just get on with it.

The councillor says that the county has a policy on its books since 2009 that it would share the cost of paved shoulders – up to $100,000 a year – with any municipalities that wanted to pay half. But the county never promoted the policy and none of the municipalities took advantage of the matching funding, Jackson said. He said the county should adopt a policy of adding paved shoulders to roads when they are resurfaced. It would take 20 years, but all of the county roads would have paved shoulders, he said.

But the county and the TLTI should start now. Every road that is resurfaced without adding paved shoulders is a missed opportunity, he said.